


Saltwater

by beans_on_toast



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anxiety, Found Family, Gen, Joe & Nicky look after Quynh, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quynh | Noriko Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29947290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beans_on_toast/pseuds/beans_on_toast
Summary: She knows what the words mean, Nicolò translating them quietly next to her. She understands the shape of the letters and the cadence of his voice. But she cannot fit them together.‘It’s very common in the aftermath of trauma…’She is death and violence and pain. She has split bone and rent flesh. Armies bowed at her feet. She is… she is... she was-The man smiles, trying to reassure. His hair is dusted with grey and lines deepen along his lips. He is a child. Yusuf’s thumb presses along her wrist, rubbing along her pulse.‘...it can be a grieving process…’(or Quynh comes back from the ocean, gets therapy and love from her family)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko (mentioned), Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Quynh | Noriko, Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Saltwater

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the tags. There is the description of having a panic attack, so take care! <3

She knows what the words mean, Nicolò translating them quietly next to her. She understands the shape of the letters and the cadence of his voice. But she cannot fit them together. 

‘It’s very common in the aftermath of trauma…’

_She is death and violence and pain. She has split bone and rent flesh. Armies bowed at her feet. She is… she is... she was-_

The man smiles, trying to reassure. His hair is dusted with grey and lines deepen along his lips. He is a child. Yusuf’s thumb presses along her wrist, rubbing along her pulse. 

‘...it can be a grieving process…’

_Lykon’s blood sliding between her fingers. The soft spark of life, suddenly more precious than gold or incense or myrrh. Don’t go, don’t go don’tdon’tdon’t_

His eyes are kind, this man, as though he _understands_ , as though he even could. For five hundred years, all she wanted was to breathe and always, there was only the crushing press of water, the sharp pain of her aching lungs. _Again and again and again._

‘...give yourself the time to rest.’ The man speaks as Yusuf helps her out, a hand on her elbow and her back and she wants to _scream_. 

_The soft, tender flesh under her hands. Thick, twisted scar tissue fracturing like the glass facsimile of her heart. Wincing and grimacing, quickly hidden but there. Pain from her hands. She pulls her fingers back as though Andromache is a fire._

_(she is, she was. she always has been. indomitable will, forged of steel and wind before the days had names. Andromache, Andromache, the name the only worship her tongue could make for five hundred years)_

The street is quiet, the glances curious but quickly turned away. The mask itches against her face, breath hot and muggy, reminiscent of the warm salt water in her mouth, the sand in her face.

For one long, terrifying moment she is back in the riptide. Her lungs are too tight, too small. A car drives past and she swallows a scream as she once swallowed the ocean, heavy and thick on her heart. A body brackets her, a body so painfully familiar and yet so distant. He wears stiff clothes, strange shapes and oddly tight in the wrong places. Her own clothes itch and tug in the wind.

He turns brown eyes to hers, open and warm and concerned as they always are and she falls.

 _It is too loud and too bright and everything hurts. She cannot cry, because the salt settles on her lips and then she heaves and heaves and cracks_ -

She rips the mask from her face, her breaths ragged and pained and not _enough_ (will never be enough. How can one make up for five hundred years without?) and clutches her hands together until they bleed.

She _hates_ this. She waited for so long to draw in a breath and her lungs have forgotten. They sputter and start, like a candle dwindling into nothing. She has burnt too low, she must nearly be undone, her time nearly spent.

_And Andromache… Andromache… my goddess_

Warm arms slide around her and she wants to fight, wants to struggle (the iron, cold and harsh and unyielding), but her body knows _these_ arms and falls into them, fits alongside them as though she is as she _was_ , as though it has not been centuries, her body eroded by the slow waves of the ocean into this new shape she cannot recognise.

 _In_. 

Another voice, more arms, pulling her together. Fingers trailing along her back, up and down, and her body obeys because she realises that she knows this. She _taught_ him this, before she forgot to breathe and water stole from her.

_Warm wood beneath her hands, supple and strong, the string, taut in her hands. Her family, her family, blood and gasps and the way Yusuf favours his side and Nicolò (Nicolò, listen!). Breathe, in and out, in and out, calm your chest, calm your heart, pull, in, loose, out._

_Out_.

She is crying, salt and water, and she is drowning, shivering and unbound. Arms hold her, hands carry her. Warm and yielding, _safe_. Nicolò’s hand, down her arm as if he is not skinning her and leaving her broken open and vulnerable. As if Yusuf’s beard is not scratching through her armour, soft and familiar and warm at her cheek and neck. 

_In._

_Andromache will wake, blood in her teeth and hair and wild and free and tasting of life and eternity and Yusuf’s arms fit tightly like a lock and key-_

_Out_. 

She shivers and they hold her. She cannot remember to breathe, she cannot remember to think. She is drowning, in eternity, spent alone. Her heart is mortal, slowly ticking in limbs that do not scar, bones that crack and pop and heal. So much she has forgotten, so much she cannot bring to mind. Words drip from her tongue, pleas and shrieks.

She is dying and undying and she is broken.

_In._

_Andromache is not healing_

_Out._

Arms hold her and hands carry her. They know, they _know_ , the exquisite pain to carry love as raw and immovable as time in a case so frail. They hold her in theirs, safe and warm (and loved) and chests rise and fall. _In and out_. She is unmade and made and held together until her fingers uncurl and her heart steadies. Till her chest moves as two others, in the rhythm born of time uncountable, known only in stars and fires and water and sands. 

_…give yourself the time to rest._

There is so much she left in the water, but not this. Not them.

_In…_

_...and out._

**Author's Note:**

> Beans working out her anxiety through fic? More likely than you'd think.
> 
> Massive thanks to Luna & Mags for their help beta-ing. Thanks for taking my thoughts and making them shine.
> 
> Take good care of yourselves and remember, it is okay to take some time out for you and rest.
> 
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](https://hyper-fixate.tumblr.com/) if that's a thing you wanna do!


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